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 Sonya Barry's BlogJune 2008 ArchivesWhere did all the projects go?Posted by sonyabarry on June 26, 2008 at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)One of my great frustrations as a new user of java.net was that it's hard to tell at a glance which projects are currently under active development. We have many members who join java.net looking for active projects so they can join and work on a project. Many project owners would love to have the help. In an effort to help those two groups connect as quickly as possible we've started reviewing projects in the general community to see how busy they are, and then we are archiving them or deleting them if they aren't currently active. Some communities take care of this on their own, and some don't. Our goal is to have some basic standards for activity and apply them consistently wherever it's needed. So what defines an active project? I'm looking for signs of life in mailing lists (public or private), source code updates, the bug tracker, or additions to the documents and files section. Anything that has usable content, either a completed project or a project that was started and then abandoned, but has seen no activity in the past year is going to be archived. So what does that mean? Really, we don't have a separate storage space for "archived" projects. So what we've done is created a top level community called archive (archive.dev.java.net) and have started notifying owners that the project will be moved to the new community because it's been inactive for so long. I'm also leaving notes on the front page of any project that has been, or is subject to being moved so that users surfing around java.net get a clear picture of that project's status immediately. Archived projects are still accessed the same way as any other project (i.e. projectname.dev.java.net) and maintain exactly whatever privacy and security settings their owners originally put in place. I'm giving the owners at least 30 days notice that the projects will be moved, but moving them sooner if I receive express permission from the owners to do so. The idea is that older projects can still be found and accessed immediately by people who want to download their source code or begin development again, but that they won't be mixed in with the current projects. A happy side effect is that a couple of project owners seem to be taking this as a nudge to start working on their neglected projects as well. I'm also going through and deleting a few projects. Candidates for deletion are projects that were created over a year ago but have no useful content. All owners are notified and have 30 days to get back to me before I delete anything, and I'm not making any value judgements about "useful" content. If there is anything at all in the repository or in the docs and files section of a project, I'm archiving it by default. What do you think? We're trying to find ways to make java.net easier to use for everybody. I hope this is a step in the right direction. | |
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